I look at her and open my mouth, but she beats me to the punch.
Bridget leans against me, her soft breasts pressing into my side. She sighs then wraps her arms around me, her body warm, and closes her eyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bridget
It seems impossible, but I think I fell asleep. A blip of time has passed when I seem myself again, satisfied, a need not realized now quenched. I blink, fighting fog, and find myself looking at Daniel’s bare chest. For a moment, I watch it rise and fall, then my hand comes up and I trace the lines of his tattoo, taking my time.
When I look up at his face, I find that he’s not asleep as I’d assumed. He’s not looking down at me. He’s staring across the room — not so much at the opposite wall as through it.
“Hey,” I say. There’s still a strange spell between us, and I’m taking a chance by breaking it. When he pulled me in here, it was clear that I wasn’t supposed to speak. Speaking invited anger. Daniel wanted one thing, and it turns out that I was dying to give it to him.
But this time he doesn’t tell me to be quiet. He doesn’t give me that hard, frightening look from earlier. Whatever he was when we came in here, he’s something else now. Again the man I thought I knew. The man that, on and off, I wonder if I might love.
“You fell asleep,” he says.
“What time is it?”
“It’s fine.”
He’s not answering the question. He’s answering the implied question, which is whether my absence — or his, or most tellingly, both of ours, has likely been noticed. But apparently not, if Daniel is to be trusted. If I choose to believe him. Which I do.
I look around the room. Again, I’m struck by its starkness. It has the feel of a large broom closet without any brooms, or a cramped basement without any stairs. It’s not dirty, but it has the natural dust and grit that comes with stone. The walls are gray blocks I’ve seen laid in Brandon’s foundations. I can inspect the door more fully now that I don’t have an orifice full of Daniel, and I see that though there’s a handle, the door itself is strange. I remember when he pulled me in here. Daniel snatched me from a stretch of hallway without any doors, meaning there’s no handle or knob or obvious entrance on the outside. Meaning this is a secret spot that nobody’s likely to find.
“What is this place?” I ask.
“Dead space.” He points to the walls in turn. “There’s a den on the other side of that wall, and that’s the downstairs kitchen, and that’s an office, another den, whatever. But the rooms are all square, and deeper than this one. To make use of this space in the middle, either that wall would have to come out, or that one, or that one, and then whatever room it broke into would gain an alcove. But it’d be a funny alcove. Nothing more than a nub off of a much larger room. The most logical use would be as a walk-in from the kitchen, but it’s in the wrong place. We’re right behind the ranges.”
I look toward the indicated kitchen wall, then the others. I try to picture the rooms beyond, wondering why the architect walled this space off.
“So it’s a mistake?” This house must cost tens of millions of dollars, and I can’t imagine any mistakes quite like this.
“The house was under construction when … when Trevor bought it,” he says, hesitating on Trevor’s name as if it’s distasteful. “It’s kind of a complicated situation. Our best guess is that the original owner meant to turn this into a panic room.”
I look at the concrete. Even the door seems thick and made of metal. So clearly it’s reinforced and no doubt soundproof, ideal for something like a panic room. That’s good. I came pretty loudly, and even now I sort of want Daniel to fuck me again, until I scream his name for no one to hear.
“But you don’t actually know,” I say.
“It’s complicated,” he repeats.
“So what does Trevor use it for?”
“Trevor doesn’t know it’s here.”
“How is that possible?”
“I didn’t know it was here, either.”
“So how did you find it?”
“Jessica told me.”
“Jessica?” It’s like I’ve never heard the name. “How would Jessica know?” It’s strange, but I feel the return of a small, creeping sensation. Something that perched on the back of my neck when Jess came to my door, with Daniel temporarily in tow. Then I answer my own question, remembering our conversation. “She saw the blueprints.”
“Actually,” Daniel says, “she saw the electrical and plumbing schematics.”
I look up. I wait.
“This room isn’t on the blueprints either. But there’s a lot of cable in this building. Not just electrical, but network, too. Security system, shit like that. And a lot of pipes. If you add up the numbers, it points to missing space, I guess. That’s how Jessica knew there was something here.”
“But how … ”
“I don’t know, Bridget. She didn’t even figure it out while looking at the schematics. It happened later. We were walking through the lawn, near the fountains, when she had a eureka moment. So she led me here.”
There’s so much I don’t understand. How did Jessica find a hidden room that nobody who’s been here before or owns the place knew about? How did she manage to eureka later, once the schematics were put away? Why was she looking at schematics in the first place, and where did she find them? It sounds like Daniel showed them to her, but why? And why are she and Daniel hanging out so much anyway?
I ask the least relevant question.
“You mean the front lawn, near the fountains?”
“Yeah. Why?”
And why, pray tell, were the two of them out walking together near the only camera blind spot I can actually remember?
“No reason.”
Again we fall quiet. I trace circles around Daniel’s nipples. He’s still mostly hard. If it weren’t totally unladylike, I think I might take his cock in my hand right now, just because I want to feel its heat — mostly for something to do, like a person compulsively checking her phone. But even thinking about it makes my naked pussy tingle, and an insidious part of me is remembering what it felt like to have him filling me up. I just came a bunch of times. I’m still dripping — my wetness combined with his. Why the hell am I still turned on? What is it about this guy?
“Bridget,” he says.
I look up, and he’s just staring at the wall again.
“That’s my name.”
“I fucked up.”
“You fucked in many directions.” I squeeze him. “And I’m cool with it.”
Daniel shakes his head then shifts positions so my arm is no longer easy around him. I let it fall. It’s like he’s trying to get comfortable, but I sense he’s deliberately laying distance between us without brushing me off.
I sit up. Now we’re side by side, our backs to the wall. The shift was subtle, but now we might as well be strangers side by side in a waiting room. The only difference is that my girls are bare to the world, my nipples inexplicably hard.
“I mean it. I fucked up. And I’m sorry.”
“You said nobody knows this room is here. So there can’t be cameras or microphones, right?”
“There’s not.”
“Then we’re fine. And the note I got earlier said there’s nothing until dinner. Free time.”
“I didn’t mean I’m sorry for this. For … ” And he kind of nods around, indicating the room.
“For ravaging me. For making me come hard enough to scrape grit up under my fingernails.”
He laughs a little, but I can tell that my affectionate jokes are only slowing something he’s having trouble getting out.
“Although I’m sorry for this, too. I just … ” Again he trails off before trying again. “I just can’t help myself around you.”
“I know the feeling,” I say.
“I meant I’m sorry for all of it. For bringing you into this. You have no idea what kind of mess I’ve gotten you into.”
“I know I’v
e made a ton of money that I’d never have been able to squirrel away, thanks to your mistake. Money that will change things for me in ways you can’t imagine. And that doesn’t include what you already did, the first time Kylie almost got me kicked out, and … ” This time, I trail off. I’m realizing how habituated I am. How used to this place I’ve become. At first, I didn’t want to be here, and still don’t — but I am getting used to it. To the people. To the fact that Brandon, back home, is probably losing his mind with worry over his missing sister.
This just feels like the way things are now, and even though it can’t last, it has its undeniable pleasures. I don’t want an apology. I’m still whole, still unharmed. And although I’ve taken my damage, I’ve also solved problems that would never have been solved in other ways.
“The others were carefully screened.”
“What, I can’t be the wife of a billionaire without taking a test?” I say it playfully, but it doesn’t land well. The first thing I see on his face is obvious jealousy. The second, for a scant second before it vanishes, is renewed lust — as if somehow even the joke of me marrying someone makes Daniel want to fuck me, to take me. Then I see more guilt. And I know, just like that, that this has never truly been about finding Trevor a wife. It’s something else.
“What is this, Daniel? This contest?”
“I can’t tell you, Bridget.”
“So it’s okay to break the rules by sneaking off to fuck me, but not to tell me what I’m doing by being here.” As well as I can without changing position, I put my hands on my hips and pretend to be annoyed, even though I’m half joking. “I’m not the spy Kylie framed me to look like, you know,” I add.
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Lots of stuff sure is ‘complicated’ around here.”
“All I can say is that it’s a kind of study. But because it’s a study, the more you know, the more that knowledge will show up in your actions and make everything worse. It’s a case where telling you more hurts you, and keeping some secrets is actually for your own good.”
Now I’m getting annoyed. It’s one thing to not tell me the truth, but something entirely different to tell me there definitely are secrets being kept … and that I’m not allowed to know them.
“So why am I here? If Kylie and Jessica and Ivy and Kat and Roxy and all the other girls were specifically chosen, how did Simple Little Bridget end up among them?”
He ignores my bait and answers simply.
“Because I hated you,” he says.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Bridget
“You don’t remember,” Daniel says.
I’m still stuck on the part where Daniel said he hated me. He used the past tense, and unless I’m seriously delusional, I don’t think he hates me now. But it still hurts to hear, and a part of me tightens inside. I want to take my clothes, to cover up. To curl away from him.
“Summer camp at Lake Wanasee,” he continues. “I was twelve, and you were thirteen. You were in the Ladybird cabin, and I was in Badger. Do you remember that year?”
The words are all familiar, but hearing them here, with Daniel, is giving me vertigo.
“You’re saying we knew each other?”
He nods.
“I don’t remember that at all.”
“Badger cabin,” he repeats. “You had a boyfriend there. Remember?”
I do. The boy’s name was Sandy, but he wasn’t a camper. He was a counselor. He was probably sixteen, and in charge of the Badgers. Or, as we called them, the Losers. Sandy’s look fit his name. He was tall, tan, and had sandy blond hair. He wasn’t my first. But that was the year I stretched out and grew tall myself, when I started forming buds and a tiny fire ignited inside me. I used to dream about Sandy, since the first fireside ceremony. He was just old enough to represent possibilities I couldn’t imagine back then, shuttled from family to family, assuming life would never sit still enough to lose its constant, low-grade pain. I watched Sandy for a few nights, my imagination outgrowing my years. Then he noticed my attention, and together we turned fantasies into reality.
“But the Badgers were — ”
“Losers?” Daniel keeps his sarcastic smile, but something about the way he says it tells me that something in that word has never stopped hurting.
I watch his eyes. I feel like I’m treading on wafer-thin ice. I’ve given myself to this man, mind and body. But right now he’s looking at me as if I’m on trial. Like he hasn’t decided yet whether he’s returning the affection he has, until now, so abundantly given.
“I think you’re remembering wrong,” I say.
“Lake Wanasee. Badger and Ladybird.”
“I did go to Lake Wanasee for camp one year. And I did … date … the Badger cabin leader. But I remember his kids clear as day. And there was no Daniel. No Dan. No Danny.”
“Daniel is my middle name,” he says.
I blink.
“When I was a kid, I went by Gerald.”
“Jerry?”
He shakes his head slowly. “Gerald,” he emphasizes. “My parents said that they hadn’t given me a name just so I could use a different one. They registered me as Gerald. They ordered my T-shirt to read Gerald. They introduced me to the camp administrators and Sandy as Gerald. To the other kids as Gerald.”
All of a sudden, I can’t look at him. Because I do remember Gerald. I remember him very well.
“I was just a kid,” I say. “I was fucked up back then.”
“You’re fucked up now.”
That feels like a hard cut, but my younger self has had it coming ever since Lake Wanasee and beyond. The suddenly sour feelings, on both sides, are my fault, but either way I can’t keep sitting here with him, naked on the floor of a room that’s been splattered with our lust. I rock to kneeling and reach for my discarded sundress. But Daniel takes me by the arm and turns me around so I’m looking right at him.
“I loved you, Bridget.”
“We were kids.”
“Changes nothing. We were the camp joke, so of course I couldn’t say anything. But I dreamed about you. I fantasized about you every moment I had. You were so beautiful that summer. You were blonder than you are now, and your hair was always a mess. You got freckles that faded toward the end, after it finally started to cool. You were so tall. And you were so … hard, walking around like you owned the place.”
I want to joke that I did own the place, but this would be exactly the wrong time for jokes. A lot of my past makes me ashamed — most of it, maybe — and now that I’m meeting this ghost from many years gone, the ball of old emotion is heavy in my gut like something alive. I want to run. To forget all of this rather than face it.
But I remember the way I must have walked and carried myself, like I just didn’t give a fuck. The way I spoke to everyone, including and especially those in charge. I was a pill that everyone tried to get rid of, but I was a troubled teen, unmovable thanks to a backing in collective guilt and social responsibility. Kicking the foster kid to the curb would have been like pushing a handicapped kid out of his wheelchair. So they left me alone. I was taller than half the counselors and had enough baggage for a pair of lifetimes already. When I was hooking up with Sandy, everyone who didn’t know better thought we were a logical couple. They didn’t think he was robbing the cradle. They figured I was sixteen, just like him. I looked it. And I took every advantage, right down to bullying, physical and — especially — emotional.
“I loved you,” Daniel repeats. “And yes, maybe it was just the stupid kind of kid love that happens when you’re twelve, but it consumed me. I couldn’t even talk to you. I was afraid. Everyone was. You were this bulletproof bitch, and you beat down anyone who got in your way. I used to fantasize that you’d notice me one day and look at me like you looked at Sandy. I was closer to your age than he was, so as the weeks went on I convinced myself that it could, maybe, really happen. But I was an idiot. I tossed the sunscreen my mom made me pack so I could get a tan,
but I only burned. You were always drooling over guys with great bodies, so I did push-ups and sit-ups when no one was watching, and of course it didn’t make a goddamned bit of difference. I was a fat and pasty white kid. That wouldn’t change in a summer.”
I can’t help myself. Daniel is still holding me to prevent my leaving, but I’ve only been looking at him in my peripheral vision. Now I look back, seeing him fully. He’s fixed whatever was broken. He’s hard and cut. He looks powerful enough to punch through these stone walls. His skin isn’t pale, though based on his lack of tan lines, I think it’s from growing up rather than the sun. He looks today the way he described me at thirteen: like someone you should never, ever fuck with.
“You can’t know what it’s like, to be a loser.” This time, I don’t hear the verbal capital L — the nickname we gave the fat, pale geeks that Sandy was supposed to watch over. This is more generalized. An identity that extended before and after summer camp, where this big man decided he was too small to matter. “You’re so beneath the attention of girls that you settle for dreaming, knowing it’s all you’ll ever have. And those dreams become like relationships. I was dating — although in my head, it was that junior high shit of going with — you for weeks before I finally spoke up.”
“Daniel … ” I don’t want him to finish this story. Now that we’re on the same page, I know how it ends.
“You didn’t just turn me down, Bridget. In my head, you broke up with me. You broke off something I’d been keeping alive for the whole summer.”
“I can’t help what you were thinking. I had no idea.”
“But you didn’t just say no. You made fun of me in front of everyone. For the rest of the summer. You looked at me like something that had crawled out of your shoe, and everyone saw it. They called me loverboy. And they laughed. And laughed. And whenever you saw it happen, you laughed, too.”
Burning Choice (Trevor's Harem #3) Page 4
